cessary
to inculcate both the love and the study of the ancient poets, which
cannot fail of giving the youth a taste for poetry, in general."

Permit me, dear Sir, to ask you, whether you advanced this for
argument sake, as sometimes you love to amuse and entertain your
friends in an uncommon way? For I should imagine, that our two
universities, which you have shewn me, and for which I have ever since
had a greater reverence than I had before, are capable of furnishing
as good tutors as any nation in the world: for here the young
gentlemen seem to me to live both in the _world_ and in the
_university_; and we saw several gentlemen who had not only fine
parts, but polite behaviour, and deep learning, as you assured me;
some of whom you entertained, and were entertained by, in so elegant
a manner, that no travelled gentleman, if I may be allowed to judge,
could excel them! And besides, my dear Mr. B., I know who is reckoned
one of the politest and best-bred gentlemen in England by every body,
and learned as well as polite, and yet had his education in one of
those celebrated seats of learning. I wish your Billy may never fall
short of the gentleman I mean, in all these acquirements; and he will
be a very happy creature, I am sure.

But how I wander again from my subject. I have no other way to recover
myself, when I thus ramble, but by returning to that one delightful
point of reflection, that I have the honour to be, dearest Sir, _your
ever dutiful and obliged_,

P.B.

LETTER XCIV

DEAREST SIR,

I now resume my subject. I had gone through the article of the tutor,
as well as I could; and will now observe upon what Mr. Locke
says, That children are wholly, if possible, to be kept from the
conversation of the meaner servants; whom he supposes to be, as too
frequently they are, _unbred_ and _debauched_, to use his own words.

Now, Sir, I think it is very difficult to keep children from
the conversation of servants at all times. The care of personal
attendance, especially in the child's early age, must fall upon
servants of one denomination or other, who, little or much, must be
conversant with the inferior servants, and so be liable to be tainted
by their conversation; and it will be difficult in this case to
prevent the taint being communicated to the child. Wherefore it will
be a _surer_, as well as a more _laudable_ method, to insist upon the
regular behaviour of the whole family, than to expect the child